2nd gen headlight upgrade in 2024

Maybe the bulb is not seated correctly. Off-axis maybe?

 

Receipt your bulb in the wire clips make sure it's in their proper it's H4 tab goes up to the top and the other two at what four and 5:00 or something like that and then after you get all that done you need to crank down righty tighty on your adjuster about eight half turns That's what you do with the screwdriver when you turn it once you make a half turn because that's what your hand does then you'll see the cutoff line magically appear on your garage wall now you set that line at whatever height you've been reading about sheets running done.

 

Regarding the alarm.

There is a built in alarm, but it isn't normally enabled. It can be configured with Techstream. To see if that is enabled, roll down the passenger side window, park the car, close all the doors, lock it. Wait several minutes (I don't recall how long it takes to arm, 5 minutes maybe?), then reach in and open the door. If it goes off, then the alarm is enabled. Turn it off with key fob, I think lock and then unlock the door, maybe the other way around.

There is some talk of a hood tamper sensor in one of the manuals, but I could never trigger it in my car. Possibly your car has a working one and it broke or unplugged, and now your car thinks the hood is open so sets off the alarm when it arms? It should be wired to at/near the hood latch release. A flaky sensor switch on any of the doors and maybe the hatch would also set off the alarm. I think it would have to short a wire to ground when it wasn't supposed to to trigger the alarm. That doesn't sound like a very common form of failure.

 

I agree. I’m gonna go for a halogen bulb as close to stock when I need to replace mine. No point faffing about with LEDs in my opinion. Maybe a whiter brighter Osram bulb perhaps!

 

Ha ha, good luck with that!

 

I'm not sure there have been any of those ... bereft, a tense of bereave, makes one imagine a reply that at one time was happily and fulfillingly punctuated, only to live to see its punctuation cruelly and devastatingly stripped away.

We do have a member here who often posts replies devoid of punctuation, but the thing is, I'm doubtful those replies ever had punctuation, so they can't be bereft.

 

Best halogen bulbs then to put in a Prius gen 2? Any specific brands that are particularly good, and last a while?

 

The headlight photo near the start of the thread looks pretty clear, but the image wasn't sharp enough to tell for sure how clear. The little scratches and pits which accumulate can scatter a lot of light, never mind the horrible losses once the headlight yellows, fogs, or seriously degrades in some other way. If the headlights are generally OK, sometimes a light polishing to remove some of these tiny defects, but not go through the factory clear coat, followed by a coating of wax to fill what is left and reduce scattering (lately I have been using Nu Finish, as it seems to attract less dirt than carnauba wax) can go a long way to brighten the projected light.

I would only use bulbs rated like the stock ones, probably from Philips or Sylvania. Bulbs with higher wattage will inevitably burn out faster, and they could even deform the headlights. Personally I hate having to stare into blue or very white headlights (color distribution at or above 5000K).

This site has a lot of data in one place:

BulbFacts | Halogen Bulb Chart - Comparing Halogen Bulbs in Reflector Headlights

I ignore their recommendations though, it seems to follow from a philosophy of "brighter is better and nothing else matters". Not sure where the star ratings in the table come from, but note that things like rally lights, totally inappropriate for normal use, are usually rated higher than mundane road bulbs.